Vista councilman is hiding in a bunker, but his head is in the clouds

That’s what Councilman Steve Gronke is ordering the citizens of Vista to do.

By failing to step up and answer reasonable questions about his arrest last month on felony domestic violence charges, Gronke is hoping the embarrassing incident will blow over without too much blowback.

“Unfortunately, there was a verbal argument between my wife and I,” Gronke wrote in a curt this-is-all-I-will-say statement to the North County Times.

“The district attorney dismissed the case because there was no violation. This is a personal matter,” he went on, adding that he would appreciate it “if you would respect my privacy.”

Leaving aside the grating, if common, grammatical error — “between my wife and I”? — Gronke, a high-school teacher, reveals a character trait that may explain in part why as a candidate he failed to unseat Supervisor Bill Horn in 2010.

No matter what kind of man he is in his private life, Gronke’s proving himself to be a weak politician. Instead of taking the raging bull by the horns, he’s hiding behind a tactical plea for ... privacy.

Look, as a councilman, one who’s married to Jan O’Reilly, a former president of the Vista teachers union, Gronke doesn’t have the luxury of anonymity. To use the tired phrase, he’s a role model whose behavior is of public concern, a standard he piously defended when it applied to a fellow councilman whose brushes with the law made headlines.

For comparison’s sake, imagine if San Diego Mayor Jerry Sanders had been arrested during a quarrel with his wife at Balboa Park.

Do you think Sanders could get away with a curtain-closing statement because the DA decided not to press charges of felony domestic violence?

No? Well, Gronke can’t either.

It’s not yellow journalism to say this. It’s Journalism 101.

From what I’ve gathered from a reliable City Hall source, Gronke and his wife separated some time ago and plan to divorce.

So far, none of our business.

Last month, however, they met at Brengle Terrace Park and the conversation escalated into a heated argument. Witnesses were alarmed enough by the physical nature of the argument to call sheriff’s deputies, who ended up arresting Gronke. O'Reilly suffered physical injury, according to the arrest report.

Important point: The arrest happened in a public place, not inside their house, and it involved not one but two well-known public figures in Vista. That’s news, not gossip.

As it happens, the incident was not reported until a story broke in the North County Times this week. My source expressed surprise that it hadn’t hit the presses much sooner.

In an ideal world, a police reporter scans daily arrest reports for prominent names. Evidently, it’s not an ideal world anymore. Gronke’s arrest nearly fell through the cracks, it appears.

If Gronke expects to have a future in politics — he’s said he might consider running for mayor or supervisor again — he’d have been smart to contact reporters, issue a statement of apology on behalf of his wife and him, and volunteered to answer reasonable questions about what happened in public.

Instead, his blanket assertion — “There’s nothing to see here!” — stoked hurtful speculation that, despite his reference to a “verbal” argument, he may have roughed up his wife and then received soft treatment from law enforcement because he’s a councilman.

There’s an irony here too rich to overlook.

When Gronke was running for supervisor, he was not shy about condemning fellow Councilman Frank Lopez, who pleaded guilty to two misdemeanor charges of failing to pay workers’ compensation at his Vista restaurant. The DA declined to prosecute allegations of check fraud.

In urging Lopez to resign from office, Gronke alluded to the dark “cloud” that Lopez’s conduct draped over the city.

Today, that morally principled view — that a councilman’s private character reflects upon the integrity of the city — is coming back to bedevil Gronke.

As luck would have it, Gronke was scheduled for some time to appear on KOCT’s “Journalists Roundtable,” a monthly discussion program.

As one of the panelists on Thursday’s program, I was hopeful Gronke would use the occasion to answer questions — reasonable questions — about the public disturbance.

On Wednesday, KOCT got word that Gronke was “unavailable,” a euphemism for “I’m in the bunker.”

This duck is a serious mistake, in my view, one that small-time politicians often make when they’re in a state of personal panic.

These local pols want to be held in sky-high esteem, they love to preen at the parades, but when the going gets rough — as it did for Lopez, former Encinitas Mayor Danny Dalager and many others over the years — they climb down off their pedestals and claim to be just regular folks whose private life is of no relevance to anyone, least of all the people who elected them.

Give me a break, they plead, their heads swimming in clouds of self-delusion.